The present disclosure relates generally to the field of dough extrusion. More specifically, the disclosure relates to compensation for pressure variance during dough extrusion.
Dough (e.g., for bread, buns, or other flour based dough products) can be conventionally divided into smaller pieces (e.g., 16-32 ounces) at speeds ranging from 0 to 200 plus pieces per minute by machine commonly called a Rotary Extrusion Divider or, Advanced Dough Divider, for example as manufactured by AMF, Inc. of Richmond, Va. The Rotary Extrusion Divider conventionally includes an auger (e.g., two screws) contained in a horizontal chamber for kneading and moving the dough to a metering pump, or pumps sometimes via a distribution manifold that can at least partially control the speed of the dough as it is sent to a knife or multiple knifes for cutting at a predetermined size or weight. Other conventional methods of dividing dough may not generally be as accurate and repeatable as a Rotary Extrusion Divider. Despite the Rotary Extrusion Divider being prominent for dividing dough, there has been only been small improvements to the original design of auger screws feeding a pump, or pumps.
Due to the rotational nature of the augers, and the operation of the metering pump, the pressure of the dough entering the metering pump varies. This pressure variation oscillates generally along a repeating wave pattern, which reduces the overall accuracy of the Rotary Extrusion Divider scaling weights and requires that excess or additional dough be included with each dough division according to statistical models of the accuracy and precision of the system performance. Further, this pressure variation is enhanced by the fixed period of the knife relative to the period of the repeating wave pattern.
In recent years, secondary companies have developed add-on machinery to compliment the Rotary Extrusion Divider. The add-on machinery has helped to reduce some of the inherent machine scaling deficiencies. For example, a machine called a Dough Saver manufactured by Bakery Systems, Inc. of Saint Louis, Mo. is essentially a weight checker typically positioned between the Rotary Extrusion Divider and a dough ball conical rounder, or horizontal rounding bars (however, in some cases because of space limitations it is located after the rounder, or bars). The Dough Saver is designed to weigh every dough ball from the Rotary Extrusion Divider, however in some cases 100% weight measurement is not possible. The computer that controls the Dough Saver and its internal algorithms typically provides modulating control to the metering pump(s) based on the dough ball weight measurements. Depending on a predefined set of weight samples taken, the computer will change the pump speed to vary the weight. However, even with the use of a Dough Saver variability of weights still exists.